The Business Case for Drinkware

The Direct to Garment (DTG) market has been hot; demand from brands, retailers and online custom designers has driven sales on e-commerce platforms to new heights. Rapid improvement in digital printing technology has allowed production facilities to seize the moment and meet the fast-paced demand for fashion-forward content. Despite the desire for custom apparel, the meteoric rise of the DTG market has made it increasingly difficult for manufacturers to differentiate themselves. The market is saturated, margins are eroding, and the challenge of managing apparel inventory of all different sizes, materials, colors, and fits is overwhelming.

Bring on Drinkware!

Drinkware is the “#1 Hot Product of the decade” in the promotional product marketplace. Second to T-shirts, it is the most popular promotional product with 9% of all distributor sales in the $25.8 Billion Market (T-shirts represent 15.1% of distributor sales). Why? “A few reasons: Increasingly, drinkware has become a fashion accessory; more buyers are moving away from single-use water bottles; and retail brands like YETI are now trendy in promo.” Other benefits are that it is a sustainable, healthy solution, and the double insulated stainless technology is excellent for both hot and cold beverages.

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The Market is Ginormous!

Drinkware reaches every demographic across the marketplace. Nine in ten people have some sort of promotional or trendy drinkware piece. From Baby Boomers to Gen Xer’s to Millennials, each age group will use a reusable drinkware piece to spread awareness of their favorite brands and trends. On average, a single drinkware piece gets 1400 impressions. Free marketing of that magnitude can elevate brand recognition and turn into sales without ever spending a dollar on content.

The expansion and growth of ecommerce further emphasizes the need to offer drinkware. Ecommerce titans Amazon and Flipkart (Walmart) gained a new competitor in Q2 of 2020 as Facebook launched its own online marketplace with Facebook Shops. Moreover, online retail juggernaut Shopify reported a 46.65% YOY growth in revenue in March 2020, highlighting the exponential potential of online shopping. Through exposure across 4 major ecommerce platforms, custom drinkware will surely continue to blossom as purchase occasions grow alongside the booming online marketplaces!

Endless Possibilities

Since there is truly only one mouth size, there are limited operational roadblocks for processing and printing different drinkware SKUs. With T-shirts, the different sizes, cuts, and fits add so many layers of complexity to order management. Drinkware cuts out the extra steps of sizing associated with the convoluted T-shirt selection process. Once the vessel style has been chosen, it is only a matter of ordering the SKU and replenishing the inventory. Shirts require much closer inventory management with the added variables of size, cut, and fit to account for when ordering stock.

Sustainable Living

Another benefit that makes reusable drinkware attractive is the sheer number of resources it saves. Using a single paper cup per day for 10 years is equivalent to consuming 6 trees. Cutting down on waste and utilizing reusable products will help to reduce the waste created by the single-use industry.

Smaller Footprint & Lower Maintenance Than DTG

DTG printers utilize a large amount of vital production floor space. On average, a DTG machine can take up around 67 ft2 (6.19 m²) of space. Adding drinkware to the mix will require another machine; however, the footprint is much smaller. The sleek design of the Helix® maximizes space by only utilizing 17 ft2 (1.57 m²) making it the perfect and compact addition to any company. On top of the spatial effectiveness of the Helix®, its maintenance is paramount to DTG machines. With DTG machines, the capping station require more maintenance, lint can clog print heads (which aren’t cheap to replace), and the white requires shaking. The Helix® eliminates all of these problems with both an automated capping station and an automated stirrer. More importantly, no lint means no problems and clean print heads!

Drinkware is a much simpler and higher margin product to manage compared to T-shirts. There is only “one size mouth”, so inventory is limited to just a few SKUs. Print-on-Demand works for a variety of great materials such as stainless steel, glass, coated metals, and plastics. All these materials enable brands and consumers to create beautiful, 360 degree gifts that people will value and use.

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